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From: bruck@actcom.co.il (Uri Bruck)
Subject: Re: Question About the Letter X
Organization: ACTCOM - Internet Services in Israel
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 1995 08:24:14 GMT
Message-ID: <DAEvCF.FK8@actcom.co.il>
References: <199506150214.TAA04350@bud.indirect.com> <DA8JAH.CM7@actcom.co.il> <acaw1-1606951310200001@mac110.nmus.pwf.cam.ac.uk>
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(some of the qoutes are out of the original order - Uri )

Andrew Woode (acaw1@phx.cam.ac.uk) wrote:
: (Apologies if the above was meant to wind us all up. But somebody out
: there might have taken it seriously). 

: Andrew
As well they should take it seriously - what people should not take seriously
is a Cambridge man who tries to teach Hebrew pronunciation to an Israeli.


: > 
: > The letter X was used for a consonant that does not exist in English.
: No. 
: > It is the sound represented by the Hebrew HET, or the Spanish G/J
: > Dutch G etc.
: The (Modern Hebrew) het (Phonetic [x] did not exist in either Latin or Greek. 
: (The ancient Hebrew Het was a voiceless pharyngeal fricative- some Hebrew
: speakers are alleged still to pronounce it as such).  

There is no need to allege, you can ask and people will reply
Hebrew has two HET like sounds, the HET is pronounced more or less as you 
described above in Arabic, and by Jews who immigrated from Arabic speaking
countries. Back in the days when the broadcasting authority in Israel
promoted a preffered pronunciation (you might call that - Israeli Received
Pronunciation) this was the preffered pronuciatin. The Other HET like sound
is less guttural and represented by an unaccented KAF (a.k.a. /kh/af).
This sounds probably resembles more closely the one in ancient
Greek, the one in words like Vlachos (the ch being the unguttural het, and 
written in Greek with an x) or Bacchus (likewise).
This Greek form represented the /kh/ sound, as is well documented if John
Healy's _The Early Alphabet_ and the library association guide
for Cataloguing rules (English Edition).
Mr.Wood is correct is stating that the sound does not exist in Latin
(In fact Mr. Healy's book mentions two sounds for the Greek X, one of which
is the /ks/ sound)

: > If you are familiar with the word 'chutspa', that would the first consonant
: > of that word.
: > The origin of X is from the ol Semitic TAV, which represents the T sound.
: Help. Old Semitic tau looks like a +, or, pushing, like a Roman X. But
: it's the ancestor of t. The origin of Greek xi is Semitic samekh for the
: shape, Semitic shin for the name.
Anyone who looks at inscription will see something closer to an-X, this is
not a simple aversion fron the cross-form, it was too early for that, just
the plain fact that straight lines were that easy to make.
Tav is undoubtedly the ancestor of T, but many linguists cite it as 
possible ancestor for X as well.
I can't quite see what Shin has to do with it 
(Shin -Hebrew for tooth, old Semitic looks like a Sigma lying on its side
is the origin for Sigma, and eventually for S - When the Latin alphabet
was ported to other languages the SH sound needed to be 'reinvented')  
: > T is also descended from that same letter. The old semitic form was also 
: > written as an X, and it's meant - a character, a symbol, pretty much what
: > X could stand for today.
: > Hebrew TAV can be pronounced as T, or by European Jews, as TH
: Henrew Tav was originally t, then split into t and [T] (english th)
: according to position. In later pronunciations of Hebrew the th sound was
: often lost- in Eastern Europe becoming 's'. I am informed that 'th' is
: still part of the Yemenite system.
The split occured mostly in Europe - Generally speaking European Jews
Have the alternate pronunciation for unaccented TAV as th/s.
Yemenite Jews pronounce all TAV's as T, they do have however a subtly
different pronounciation for accented Gimel and Daled.
BTW - There are three letters in Hebrew which have two alternate
pronunciation across all the Jewish communities, throughout history.
BET - accented B unaccented V
KAF - accented K unaccented /kh/
PAY(pe) - accented P unaccented F
the F sound has no other representation in the Hebrew alphabet
As Mr. Woode stated correctly, placement in the word is one of the 
considerations for the pronunciation
 
 Uri Bruck
 bruck@actcom.co.il
